Radical social innovations and the spatialities of grassroots activism: navigating pathways for tackling inequality and reinventing the commons

Abstract

In this article, by drawing on empirical evidence from twelve case studies from nine countries from across the Global South and North, we ask how radical grassroots social innovations that are part of social movements and struggles can offer pathways for tackling socio-spatial and socio-environmental inequality and for reinventing the commons. We define radical grassroots social innovations as a set of practices initiated by formal or informal community-led initiatives or/and social movements which aim to generate novel, democratic, socially, spatially and environmentally just solutions to address social needs that are otherwise ignored or marginalised. To address our research questions, we draw on the work of Cindi Katz to explore how grassroots innovations relate to practices of resilience, reworking and resistance. We identify possibilities and limitations as well as patterns of spatial practices and pathways of re-scaling and radical praxis, uncovering broadly-shared resemblances across different places. Through this analysis we aim to make a twofold contribution to political ecology and human geography scholarship on grassroots radical activism, social innovation and the spatialities of resistance. First, to reveal the connections between social-environmental struggles, emerging grassroots innovations and broader structural factors that cause, enable or limit them. Second, to explore how grassroots radical innovations stemming from place-based community struggles can relate to resistance practices that would not only successfully oppose inequality and the withering of the commons in the short-term, but would also open long-term pathways to alternative modes of social organization, and a new commons, based on social needs and social rights that are currently unaddressed.

Grassroots innovation for the pluriverse: evidence from Zapatismo and autonomous Zapatista education

“…None of the main theoretical strands on grassroots innovation are primarily concerned with radical, bottom-up innovations aimed at creating alternatives to development. There are several recent studies on innovation realized by grassroots groups that seek to create radical ruptures with the dominant capitalist rationality (e.g., Apostolopoulou et al 2022 ; Boyer 2015 ). At the same time, the academic literature on post-development, alternatives to development and the pluriverse has barely focused on the analysis of innovation per se, even though innovation is central to the creation of radically new societies.…”

Mapping affective infrastructures otherwise

“…Our use of reworking is intentional as differing social and political arrangements are mediated over and through infrastructure. Reworking is also partially inspired by Katz's (2004) conceptual framework of the three R's (resilience, reworking, and resistance), whereby we see a pragmatic and situated reconstitution of materials take place on the micro-level (also see Apostolopoulou et al, 2022; Hughes et al, 2022). We suggest that diagnosing how infrastructures facilitate uneven ‘powers of action’ might include following the affective attachments (that are creative of the kinds of social and political relations that Knox (2017) posits) as infrastructure is repaired, maintained, or allowed to decay.…”

The 5W+1H of Second-Generation Activism: Narratives from Below

“…These factors seem to influence their chances of taking part in forms of unconventional and unstructured political participation that foster the development of shared solidarities and trust relationships connected to the protest (Melucci, 1996;Diani, 2015). Consequently, when established social structures and institutions prove unable to provide satisfactory solutions to problems of high social relevance, challenges from below have been useful in bringing about changes in a particular social aspect or the society itself (Apostolopoulou et al, 2022;Törnberg, 2018;Ambrosini, 2016Ambrosini, , 2020Isin and Nielsen, 2008).…”

“…These practices include political participation through associations with an active role in the public arena and can be seen as a "process of creation of rights" (Balibar, 2004;Owen, 2018), in which the concept of citizenship is actively built. Second-generation youths act at a national level aiming at influencing the political debate/choices in the host society, promoting their rights and interests, expressing "acts of citizenship" (Nyers, 2006(Nyers, , 2008Isin and Nielsen, 2008), and producing "radical social innovations" (Apostolopoulou et al, 2022;Törnberg, 2018) 4 . They act in a socially and politically pluralistic environment and try to contribute to decision-making processes in a direct and formal way as an "association on the move": no longer an association, but not a social movement yet.…”